Life in the wake of Heaven's gain

Master iconographer Ksenia Pokrovsky at an icon workshop held by Hexaemeron

And so on July 7, 2013 it has come to pass that my beloved icon mentor Ksenia Pokrovsky has made her transition from this earth to the Eternal.

I am still in awe of the small miracle of her husband's message (dear Lev Alexeyevich Pokrovsky) getting through to me as he sent it out in Russian and somehow it translated and got to me--an unlikely happenstance. It was a very special blessing to have received the word in time to make the journey to her memorial service in Salem, Mass. last Wednesday night 7/10.

The timing of her passing has left a profound impact upon me for so many reasons.  All my intentions and hopes to return to see her and Lev were continually postponed and never materialized.  It was always one step too far to get the chance to go.  But I was able to say goodbye there in the small Russian Orthodox church, with the beautiful song and liturgy as her body lay there with us, with those who loved her.  

It turns out Ksenia had been sick for a long while.  I knew she had been battling with insomnia and a delicate heart.  It was heart surgery the week of July 4th that she never returned from.

Ksenia made this world a more beautiful place.  I was made a better person in the great blessing of knowing her and having the time to have spent with her in the studio and her tremendous patience with me--even with my ignorance of so much...I am humbled at the simple knowing of the enormity of what I was graced with.

The plan of my life has strengthened in the wake of this transition.  I have been given a clarity and renewed resonance of purpose to the larger goals of my own earthly journey, wading through the on-going awe of timing and Providence and grace.  Ksenia gave me a compass to cherish and even though I didn't have the time to invest more with her, what was given was nothing short of a true gift in the lessons that were imparted.

I will always remember Ksenia's smile and humor and ability to see the bigger picture.  Her making me sit and slow down and drink tea and be....the art of speaking without talking.  And she would smoke her cigarettes and the birds would sing in her kitchen.  Her beautiful hands that were so skilled and accomplished that so lovingly shared the skills and nuances of articulating line.  The painful ache of being told that I didn't understand, and her encouragement of finding a way to get to there.  Her telling me to scrape, re-do, and scrape more--and knowing the joy of finally arriving at a place of hearing her say "yes", as my heart filled to the brim at the happiness of making it to the place she intended.  The way she said "tender"--to know there is love in the simple act of line, and that line in and of itself is obedience.

I cannot put into words the Beauty that was made manifest through Ksenia. 

The act of climbing the stairs, as anticipation would build to enter into her world which encompassed not only Ksenia herself, but her sweet husband Lev who was always lovely to talk to, daughter Anna,  grandchildren and countless other visitors who would pass through their home. And I too was treated as family, and had a place in her story.

For all this I thank Father Alexander Men who gave her the charge of passing on the gift of iconography.   

She was gracious enough to take on a pregnant student, and then one that brought baby (Soren let me paint for so many months with him on my knee or lap).  She understood me and my motherhood. She too, the mother of five, and one who found a way to the brush.

Ksenia's calling was great.  I have heard stories of heart conversion from seeing the great icon of the Holy Trinity of Rublev, and her icons too are able to open the soul.  They shout from the rooftops and from the mountains that Christ in his infinite beauty is present, is here, in the moment face to face with us though the icon--whether it be through Christ himself or his larger family and angels that sing of the reality of theology in line and color and form.  The Incarnate Truth, present to behold.

Ksenia too has now passed through the window of Eternity that she knew so well in the day-to-day reality of her gift made manifest.  Thanks be to God!

And may her soul bask in the glory of heaven and the fullness of the Resurrection.

Icon of the Resurrection written by Ksenia at St. Andew's Orthodox Church, Lexington, KY. http://www.izograph.com

Making way, making new

Spring.  Renewal.  At last.

More than a year gone since the last words placed here and time shaped by other speeds driving my way. Outside the confines of routine and survival, much has been incubated within in regards to heart-fires, but need now to resurface the voice, and keep it kindled and flamed. And so I will try to place words down to mark passage for this movement, this transition, this healing pulling towards new horizons.

Much reason to give thanks amidst minimizing of space and other worldly constraints--a healing herniated disk, Aaron's creative struggles pushing into clarity of step, the longing of my creative paintbrush (backseat now to the daily motions of work) but stepping out in bursts of form, children growing happy & quick--all amidst a world crying out in brokenness...

Give us Lord our daily bread.

I have contemplated now since leaving Mill Pond the divine appointment in time of all things, and the necessity to embrace our own inability to comprehend the bigger orchestrations behind it all.  I am firmly adhering to the notion that now is a time of preparation, of pared down simplicitiy in order to recognize signs of direction.  To try, to learn, to take the high road in all daily struggles, no matter how painful or incomprehensible. Acceptance?  And most especially recognizing that within the nakedness, the stripping of things in the present moment, there is discovery of Franciscian liberty and freedom that I would not have been ready for otherwise.  Strange how in the minimal, the simplicity laid bare on the threshold of our door that The Dream can surface stronger than ever, binding all together, reminding that the multitude of hopes planted deep in the bones will not be extricated easily. Laying bare pushes all the elements to the surface--hopefully to examine and understand with grace sloughing off the eyes of self that bind and can confuse and hinder the a-ha (love that a-ha!). Peace.  If only more of those clarity moments.  To ride it like a balanced kayak skimming the surface and floating on the wake of rushing white rapids...carry it through, carry it through, carry it through.

And so now, in one of those moments, hope is what I ride on, and a subtle, surfacing understanding that visions have their own way of coming into being--oft not the way that our limited gaze and scope could ever expect.  I want to embrace my unknowing.  It is our human priviledge to operate joyfully under the grace of the moment, and yet to recognize the signs of the path to walk on in the journey.  And to not to fall asleep, but push on and on into prayer, into the eye of the storm, into the still point that buoys us all.

The fiddleheads are preparing to rise in the wet earth blanketing these hills.  Laughter of the children echo and resound too making this day whole.  This winter was very long (too long), and finally, finally we can step out of its tarried shell into newness and regeneration. Push aside the dead leaves and see the multitude of greening rising, rising, rising.

Today my brushes will be dusted.  
...St. Francis will position himself, the crown of thorns surrounding the Mandylion of Christ will come into focus and Moses will move from pooled color in darker shades slowly into light.

Here, now, always, simple gratitude.

Pouring into the sea of reason

This is incubation at its pinnacle.  Winter in New England, mild to a native, and yet potent in its ability to isolate and disconnect.  I need to bare this burden, and yet seek a way to survive.  Aaron is in LA immersed in his craft and all that comes with it, and I am tending the fire through relentless work and the daily tides that come and go with the needs of five children.  Breathe deep.  Some day there will be time for you too woman.  I will not look at the time slipped from my time with Ksenia, which too soon has past, and perhaps and most likely will not return to me in this lifetime.  So I shall trust that there is a divine plan to catch and free my dreams as well.  Here inside the incubation awaits a burning bush, a vision, a brush that longs to wield beyond the gates of Eden, beyond self, and surmount the challenge of potential miracle.   


Believe me, I know I am nothing but a gift of a Godhead blown alive in this present moment. Here, now, always, the Spirit penetrating the is-ness of it all.  I will hold true this moment birthing forth so that grace and gratitude can be made full in the mercy of action.  Spin my dust of being into radience, particles of freedom distanced from the wages of sin.  Take me into the depths of knowing patience so I can attest the ravages of both time and test.  It is different when life feels as if it has cycled far enough into the span of one's distance to barely glimpse the days to come--to feel them in their pregnancy of unknowing and know the pace of time to pursue the course to bring them full term.  I will hold fast. It will be revealed.


Show this woman the path that anoints the stead.  The will is permeated, saturated in purpose.  This life as we know it is all falling away.  I will collect my house in order and be ready.  Today happens to be the feast of the Three Hierarchs.  And they are complete in the other room, ready to go off into the world, my offering to their sacrifice and wisdom.  Although no photo yet of my icon, this is an ancient example:

Troparion: "Let us who love their words gather together and honor with hymns the three great torch-bearers of the triune Godhead: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. These men have enlightened the world with the rays of their divine doctrines. They are sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom filling all creation with springs of heavenly knowledge. Ceaselessly they intercede for us before the Holy Trinity!" 


And so I will pray for a strengthening of spirit and another log be lain on the hearth.  Gently, lovingly, may the warmth grow and spread so that the light illumines the way.  Time shall set us free and the promise of release shall unfurl purpose to the wait and incubate. 

                                                    *                  *                *

Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom: During the eleventh century, disputes raged in Constantinople about which of the three hierarchs was the greatest. Some preferred St Basil (January 1), others honored St Gregory the Theologian (January 25), while a third group exalted St John Chrysostom (November 13).

Dissension among Christians increased. Some called themselves Basilians, others referred to themselves as Gregorians, and others as Johnites.

By the will of God, the three hierarchs appeared to St John the Bishop of Euchaita (June 14) in the year 1084, and said that they were equal before God. "There are no divisions among us, and no opposition to one another."

They ordered that the disputes should stop, and that their common commemoration should be celebrated on a single day. Bishop John chose January 30 for their joint Feast, thus ending the controversy and restoring peace.






 

Our Lady of Guadalupe and a gift ~

I need to establish something.  Something that perhaps is already a given, but none-the-less something that I want to stress--I am not imagining myself to be an iconographer yet. I am walking to that point, but will clarify aspiring as the key term. It is a slow climb, amidst the other parts of my life as wife and mother of five. 

I have fully embraced the notion of the journey and slow daily process of learning to become. I think this runs in a synonymous fashion with the daily dying to self and sin and hopeful learning to love more and more each day.  To break old habit, to not fall asleep, to be in constant awareness of tending to the door--allowing the worthy to enter and break bread. To be open to that which the Creator intends.
This is what gets me up each day.  The notion of possibility.  To be a mouthpiece to the Spirit, through hands and eyes and voice.  And often I fail, or seem to make only the slightest of marks to fulfill.  But God can be like the smallest voice deep within the wind, and I am learning that acceptance of the small is liberation, as long as I am faithful in obedience.  I do not want there to be much of "what I have failed to do" if prompted. 
And I have been prompted.  So much of it has to do with Beauty, and the gesture of the reveal to the world. And again, who am I?  I am nothing.  I am dust that longs for the rain to be poured forth or to be spit upon so that I may become clay, and be shaped and somehow anointed on the eyes of the blind. To take part in the return to wholeness.  For whomever that may be...


"Above all, trust in the slow work of God..." Teilhard de Chardin


I have slowly been working on the fulfillment of a small, still echo that I have lived with for several years.  One that I was unprepared to even attempt earlier as I did not have the training to carry it through. You can read more in length about this project on my website under "Life Icon Project" http://www.iconeyestudio.com.   But I was just recently granted funding to go ahead, and I feel confident that I have the ability to do it now, after several years of training and pushing myself to learn.  Words fall short.  This is an enormous gift to be able to bring Our Lady of Guadalupe to more people and one I am most passionate about.  I am certainly no expert on her apparition that occurred back in 1531, but the miracle of image that was given has to be contemplated.  It was the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima that opened my heart back when I was nineteen, and this one, being that it is a miraculous painting, strikes a very personal place as an artist.
(Very good photographs of the  image and understanding of symbols used within can be found http://www.secretsoftheimage.org/en/index.html ~ one can get very close to areas of interest). 
So I am currently undertaking a large true-to-size commission of the image, using my skills as an (aspiring) iconographer, but adhering closely to the true prototype of the image from the original.  I am researching indiginous pigments to Mexico, and currently a board is being made roughly 3 1/2 by 5 feet in size by a master carpenter.  There is no way to express my excitement.  Affirmations of this specific undertaking are being given daily, even though I do not have a permanent future home for the icon as of yet.  I know it will be made known in due time.  Even my carpenter friend, upon giving him the master pattern for the board, shared with me his recent enthusiasm about grinding stones and gems to mix into layers of beautiful wooden boxes that he makes, which paralleled my own need to grind Azurite and other gems from Mexico to incorporate into the painting process with the organic and luminescent inherent nature of egg tempera.
I only briefly share my enthusiasm here, but I will be documenting the full journey on another blog for the record: http://www.ourladyofguadalupeproject.blogspot.com ~ join me if you wish. The unfolding has already been most beautiful...
So in utmost gratitude for having a patron who joins me in anticipation of Beauty, I pray for the unfolding of gifts for all, that we can support one another through the slow and wonderous work of God...

The prayer of the still point: brush, breath, and illumined dust.

A detail of Hildegaard Von Bingen's self portrait from one of her illuminated manuscripts

Slowing pulse.  Silence.  Here within the room the air is thick with the promise of all that can come in the slow and steady approach.  The moon is rising out my window off my left shoulder with its light hitting the white barn down the road. The stillness of it all settles.  

Here and now the echo chamber of sound removes itself, with all its overlapping burden, that had run into the wire of my still point.

Now it is time to journey into this advance of process, of action, of defining love.  This too is the clarity of the moon grown full wound around my hand, grasping a slowly moving brush.  Slower still I move, sculpting this movement into this other land--juncture of the land of the living and of the Everlasting-not-yet that hovers on the pool of shifting light between shadow and form, here and now.  

But I want to pull closer into this sacred space, this place that illumines my heart and drives my hunger for more.

This is all a reassurance, a promise of things to come.  This smell, this taste in the air, the subtle weight of the pigments and their smooth density on my brush, and the means to achieve an end.  Can I discard the other weight of the invisible stones tied on my back? The things of this world that meet my own sin and prevent fullness of beauty?  And so they prepare to fall.  They must.

Breathe deeper still.

How to pool color like clouds of Genesis on the uncreated Light of Being...round and round with French yellow ochre and white floating with the bare yolk of this emulsion and pure holy water caught from the font at Lourdes while I was pregnant.

What is liberation?  I am nothing.  

The burdens, the rocks, the shadows: the fears, the cacophany of intrusion, sin, death.  

"Be still and know that I am God."

The weight slides like one wandering in a desert stripped bare, no bodily provision but faith.  No why. Attentive to the wind, the light, the dust of Eden upon the feet. Not even survival, but being. The promise of the moment and the timeless that ensues like a victor of death.

Prepare the space for the Holy One.

The stars and sky wait outside the panes of this Northern window, pale moon cast blue on the surface of the illumined snow. 

Slowly and with purpose, the brush exposes flesh and space and absorbs time in the determined layer after layer, transparent and pure.

This is but one movement:

Breathing in Lord Jesus Christ, Son of The Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Distilling the mud from gifted hue, original in their incarnate unfolding, there the Beauty of The Savior's face opens through image on simple plank. Pigmented shadows, yet I see the imprint of the foundation: the yolked clay in place, ready to become the light of the Resurrection in its next movement, while exhaling have mercy on me and on the whole world. 

This shall dry and saturate, fuse and mark passage.  

Is this why it is called "opening" an icon?

Every tone in its place, harmonizing the next movement, transitioning to the victory of Life over death. Still the moon travels, slower in the latent hours, rising higher to pass peak and prepare for its descent, the coming of dawn, the light of life to come.

And at this juncture, closure.

Have mercy on me and on the whole world.

Have mercy on me and on the whole world.

Have mercy on me and on the whole world.   

Echoing into my rise to now make haste to the breath of sleep.   

Full of thanks.

Ready.        

My beautiful iconography mentor Ksenia Pokrovsky

.

September has arrived.  This brings me at the happy arrival of re-entering into my Russian-Byzantine Iconography mentorship and long-awaited further study with Ksenia Pokrovsky (www.izograph.com) through a NH State Arts Council grant.

I just found this lovely photograph of this most wonderful woman.  This woman who has allowed me into her studio and helped to bridge my desire to become an iconographer with all that means in the slow steady push of entering into the process, the technique, the theology, the beauty.  She holds the promise of all that I need yet to learn. I miss her and the joy of sitting at her icon table as her wild birds sing and swoop overhead (the sound of a babbling brook from the third floor eves of an old Victorian house).  I am ready to be there with her critical eye, her slow and steady encouragement, her smile and "time to take a break", as we would go to her table in the kitchen, and she would feed me goat cheese and crackers and occasionally a strange and wonderful Russian cookie along with black tea.  "But don't iconographers fast while writing icons?"  Not with a baby in the mix, I soon found out, incubating or nursing. When I last left Ksenia's studio (outside of a visit this spring) I was eight months pregnant with my son Soren, and ready to embrace a different intensity of transition into this world for my littlest one.  Soren, who is rapidly approaching two years next month, is my child number five--to which Ksenia, also a mother of five, says is the perfect number of children for a woman. She is living proof that mothers indeed can become master iconographers, even if that speaks of decades of pursuit.

So time has passed and I have tried to do my best on my own in the few moments of time that I find to enter into the most beautiful gift of prayer and paint through the icon inbetween feeding and loving the children at my feet (and those who are taller than me as well as my sixteen year Justin).  But I have missed Ksenia.  And I fail miserably to arrive where my desire propels alone in my studio.  I miss her "scrape!" with the passing of a blade to erase hours of work because it simply was not right.  Honestly, I think she would have me scrape everything I have written (we "write" icons--icons are as Word--liturgy as line and color) in this time away from her eye.  This is why iconography is a living tradition, passed down from iconographer to iconographer and very much needing the direct instruction of a master to pass the gift.  And to discipline the pursuit of beauty.

Ksenia is a remarkable woman.  She began her own pursuit of iconography in the 1960's when iconography was still very much forbidden in Russia.  She started out her adult life in science, studying physics, when she met Father Alexander Men who was to become her spiritual father (a tremendous voice in the Orthodox Church, who was martyred in 1990 ~ www.alexandermen.com).  He encouraged her to follow the path of iconography, to which he proclaimed to her that within several decades, there would be an enormous resurgence of interest in this art.  "You will teach others, " he told her, with a prophetic insight.  

Learning iconography primarily on her own through study, practice and restoration work, she did spend time with renowned iconographer Maria Sokolova (or sister Juliana), observing her at work and in lengthy discussion when they had summer cottages next to one another in the 1970's, learning what she could in the difficult time of not being able to openly practice iconography.  Ksenia has personally shared with me in our breaks from instruction, the struggles of that desire to learn when she first was getting on her feet with writing icons coupled with raising children.  I very much relate to that, and enjoyed hearing of her packing infant in a stroller to wheel down to Maria's cottage so the baby could nap while she could learn--seizing any opportunity to immerse in the art.

By the 1980's, Ksenia had come into her own as an iconographer and as a teacher, and her Izograph Studio was a school where students could receive formal instruction where there had practically been few options outside of monasteries, let alone for women.    It was a special time for Ksenia, who loves to reflect on the collective minds and desires of fellow iconographers concerned with the resurrection of the icon.  I especially love her common concern for traditional materials, namely the natural pigments, for which she used to be a storehouse for as well--bags of ochres, blues from remote places, vermillions---all of which were not readily available to the public as it was still a criminal act to practice iconography.  I wish I had a photo of her pigment jars which sit on a large shelf next to her table and library, hauntingly beautiful (this will come).

For someone who grew up unchurched (but now a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox at heart) with limited access to icons in the US, it is an enormous priviledge to study under this remarkable woman.  She has made it clear that I am her last student outside of the workshops she leads--www.hexaemeron.org and that too is quite humbling.  And I have so far to go...  Many people don't understand this intense desire to adhere to this tradition that is not about self-expression (I came through art school in my college years), but a direct connective artistic and liturgical thread to Christ himself, to walk through these doors to the Eternal initiated by lines of fellow jouneymen.  It is indeed a beautiful journey.

"A Westerner taking an interest in iconography and studying iconography as either a painter or a scholar almost inevitably arrives at an understanding of one of the essential aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy: the confession of Christ as divine beauty." 

~ Irina Yazykova, from Hidden &  Triumphant  www.paracletepress.com

(I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the underground struggle to save Russian Iconography)  

The confession of Christ as Divine Beauty.  And this is so.  I am struck by the icon deeply as a beauty that takes us not only closer to our Creator, but also as a unifying tradition to the church undivided, and the mystery of the heavenly Jerusalem to which our souls long to be.

So thank you Ksenia, for allowing me to connect with this tradition through your life's dedication, and for taking to heart what father Men instructed you to do.

 

I will try to honor you and Christ through my efforts.

Free fall, flow, wait, mix and enter

Slow stream is bumping me downstream in this makeshift boat of found objects, with an undercurrent that is about to flip everything around in lunar tidal show coinciding with the fork ahead.  Careful now--flow, flow, flow--steadily  pouring us into deep, quick river.  Are we ready?  Soon I will be a fish swimming upstream since steering is near impossible and it is time for shape shifting--I want to jump in now as longing is acute, but it is premature, and I am sure to drown in an imperceptible assurance of ability that has yet to prove itself and move beyond danger. Patience.  Hold me steady and place my hand in yours.  Where to?  Together we can tarry the night and heavy matter that oft holds us fast. If only this rudder was less a ribbon and more a sword, but then again, now we can slide over this drop, sailing freefall to the beauty below of white water and smooth stone.

Embrace the moment, breathe, and hold on.

Sometimes I would like to see the Other in the here and now.  Thinking about dimensions in this world. Shadows being two-dimensional reflections of our three-dimensional world.  And what about the three-dimensional world?  What does it reflect?  3-4-5-6-7...spaces unseen except in musing and a second sense of knowing, tasting, believing. 

It is time.

Time to allow opening up and immersion in holy water and holy fire.  Cleanse and purify.  Make ready.  Become a welcome door post for entry into this room with table set, sweet smell of feasting about...but where are the guests?  Wait. Wait. Wait. They are coming. I mustn't loose hope of my intuition that told me to prepare, make ready, FOR THEY SHALL COME.

How long do we wait?

We must keep everything warm and the lamps burning.

In all this I long to see Tarkovsky's world.  Feeling like I too am here in this house in wait, flowing in and out of time.  Waiting for the physician to come over the field.  Hands passing off gifts, tongues shaping words to linger the mouth and be given, to help steer the next moment.  The next door.

Dust of possibility lies in beautiful cups on my icon table.  The promise of Beauty.  A waiting that I can open.

Now. 

So I shall go and justify the means with an egg.  Yolk of incubation.  And incubation released.

Funny how the alchemy of mixing paint can propel my heart to open wider.  Bringing the two together: this dust and malleability through line, stroke, curve, finding love.  To reflect in pools of color gentle clouds, light, and layer the sounding board of God's promise. 

I can be an instrument.
I can wait.
I can learn to steer this boat.
I can keep warm and ready.
I can open the door.
I can see them coming.
I can feel the dawn breaking on the plains of the Great Cathedral.
I can taste vision.
I can make vermillion.

I can illumine.

And here, now, always,

Sweet hope.